Inventing New Reactions for a Green Economy

Chao-Jun Li^1,*

¹Department of Chemistry, McGill University, 801 Sherbrooke Street West, Montreal, Quebec H3A0B8, Canada

 

    Historically, one relies on Mother Nature to provide all the material needs of society.  The development of modern chemistry has enabled us to transform our natural resources as well as to create new matters from existing ones to benefit the society, which has greatly enriched our modern living and increased the quality of life.  The heroic creativity, imagination, and innovation of chemists have touched every corner of our daily life from the colorful clothes that we wear to the ever changing electronic products that we “play” with, from the pharmaceutical agents to combat life threatening diseases to synthetic fertilizers to boost crop productions for the world needs, from the rapid growing number of skyscrapers to the ever increasing speed of transportation. However, the state-of-arts of chemical industry is facing increasing challenges from resources, safety and environmental concerns.

   Our future sustainability mandates fundamental innovations in sciences and technologies that can directly transform readily available feedstocks (more preferably renewable ones) and directly without the need for extensive manipulations could result in a positive impact on the three key interconnected pillars of sustainability: environment (waste minimization), resources, and energy. As part of this endeavor, we have explored new fundamental reactions that can drastically shorten synthetic steps, more directly transform renewable biomass and abundant feedstocks (CO2 and methane) into high valued products, and harvest solar light by chemical means and utilize photo-energy as energy input for chemical conversions.  These new reactivities potentially provide some food-for-thought for the next generation of fundamental molecular transformations with an eye on our future sustainability.

 

Keywords: green chemistry, green economy, new chemical reactivities, sustainability

 

References:

[1].  Li, C.-J.; Trost, B. M. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci (USA), 2008, 105, 13197.

[2].  Li, C.-J Acc. Chem. Res. 2002, 35, 533.

[3].  Li, C.-J. Acc. Chem. Res. 2010, 43, 581.

[4].  Li, C.-J. Chem, 2016, 1, 423-437.

[5].  Li, C.-J. Acc. Chem. Res. 2009, 42, 335.

 

李朝軍，加拿大皇家科學院院士，發(fā)展中國家科學院院士(TWAS)，中國化學會會士，美國科學促進會會士(AAAS)，美國化學學會會士，英國皇家化學會會士，加拿大化學化工學會會士，加拿大綠色化學首席科學家。鄭州大學學士(1983)，中國科學院化學所碩士 (1988)，加拿大麥吉爾大學博士(1992)，斯坦福大學博士后(1992-1994)，1994-2003年為美國杜蘭大學化學系助理，副，正教授。2003年起任加拿大麥吉爾大學化學系E. B. Eddy 教授，加拿大NSERC綠色化學CREATE中心主任， 魁北克省綠色化學和催化中心聯(lián)合主任等。李教授獲得了美國NSF Career Award (1997)、中國海外杰出青年基金(2000)、美國總統(tǒng)綠色化學挑戰(zhàn)獎(2001)、加拿大綠色化學與工程獎(2010)等.  他開創(chuàng)的A³偶聯(lián)反應收錄在《Name reactions》， 交叉脫氫偶聯(lián)反應(CDC)收錄在《有機人名反應、試劑與規(guī)則》的書中。任英國皇家化學會（2004-2020）《Green Chemistry》及 2020-《Chem.Commun.》 副主編。